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It's unbelievable, I know. But our last baby is one and I'm not sure where the year has gone.

Ten points if you can spot the missing month in the above picture---might have had to duplicate one of the months because I totally flaked on getting a quilt shot. And yet, I'm too obsessed with the monthly comparison collage to let it go!

But please, look at this comparison of one month versus twelve months! Those legs though.

Waller McBaller is walking all around the house now, up stairs like a boss and can dance like nothing I've seen before. We say he took his first steps at 10 months, started walking at 11 months, and now at a year he's nearly jogging;)

He's JUST starting to get the hang of drinking water from a cup. He prefers an old school water bottle and nothing fancy, and is really only digging water and not milk yet. He still nurses twice per day and would probably do that for comfort many, many more times a day if we had time/I let him just stay attached to me. Feeling a little sentimental about my baby turning one, and the realization that he will probably be done nursing soon. Or maybe not, but it's definitely a different ballgame nursing this big guy compared to baby Wallace from a year ago. I'm so thankful he's a great nurser, what a way to go out! <3

Solid food is going well, but he still loves purees a lot. Maybe because he isn't drinking a ton of fluid, so he likes the watery baby food? He will also put DOWN the processed carbs and also ice cream. Fourth babies get sugar before their first birthdays, okay?

He's talking and babbling a lot more now, too. He can legit say 'dada' and looks right at Nate when he says it. He says 'shhhhh' and goes to grab his shoes and tries to put them on his feet. He tries to say 'Tru' and goes to look for Truman, but that word and also 'Cece' sounds a lot alike. Mostly he loves to sing to himself, saying 'ba ba ba ba ba' or 'oooooooo'. He can also wave 'bye bye' and says 'ba' when he does. He can shake his head 'no' when we tell him not to do something, and it's stinking cute to see his serious face when he shakes his head no.

I love that Wallace can understand some of what we are saying now. He's really such a delight and incredibly chill. I cannot stress this enough, and many people comment that wow, he's really laid back! I guess he HAS to be, as a fourth baby, but he's mostly down to hang with the big kids and loves him some mommy snuggles. There are times he only wants me, and only wants me to HOLD him. But he will also waddle over to Tony or Lois or Nate and lean into their legs like, 'Pick me up, fools!'

Sleep? Meh. He IS sleeping through the night most of the time, so that's something. But many mornings he wakes at 5-5:30am for the day. Better than starting the day at 4:30am, and better than 2 wake ups at night but still. Mama's tired. But I think that's just life now, right? I don't mind the 5 o'clock hour too much because I'll just get up and run after I feed him, if Nate can entertain Wallace for a bit before N goes to work. Naps are rarely over an hour, but we still do two naps around 9 or 10, and again around 1 or 2. I don't know, maybe he's ready for one nap but this seems SUPER early to me. Bedtime is around 7:30pm. He cries before every nap time and bedtime and sometimes even when we walk into his nursery. The kid just doesn't want to miss out on anything, I think!

Wallace is so very loved by all of his siblings. I love watching all of their relationships grow, but Truman and Wallace might have the most special bond of all. But then again, Cecelia carries Wallace around like her (big) baby doll, and Porter is so very patient with Wallace when he just destroys Porter's trains. I think we are all slightly infatuated with this baby boy and I don't see that changing anytime soon.

Teeth! Wallace got his two front teeth this month, and one other top tooth is right there. That brings the grand total to four;) Way behind the curve of his siblings with his chompers, but his mobility blows them out of the water. Because it's totally a competition, I know.

He had his one year appointment today, complete with three shots and one finger poke (no lead, which makes me feel relieved after the lead paint removal process outside). He is 21 lbs 9 oz, which is 54%, and 30.5" which is 74%. He has consistently been on these growth curves for some time now, my sweet average, tall-ish guy.

We had a huge BBQ joint birthday party for Wallace and Porter last weekend, with close to 50 people here to celebrate. I knew Ace would put a smash cake down like a boss, and he didn't disappoint.

We are gearing up for a BIG Oregon family vacation, which will be Wallace's second time on a plane. I feel like the difference between one year and 9 months is a big one, so these flights might be a little more brutal. But we can't wait to meet our first nephew and our kids' first cousin!

It's been quite the year for mister Wallace, and for the rest of us? It's been the fastest year of my life. It's making my head spin to think about our baby being a year old, but that whole thing about long days and short years? I understand it more and more as our kids age. We officially have an 8, 6, 4, and 1 year old. Amazing.

Have I ever told you how much I hated the brown roof, brown siding, and dirty cream colors?

Driveway side: I love how the windows and doors just pop now. Also I love the little side ceiling of the overhang above our door. So glad the painter scraped it all off to show off the original bead board. Just wish we could have done that to the other soffits that have bead board, but it took a million years to scrape off a million layers of paint on that wood. And it would have cost us about $1000 more, so no. Just this little part of wood will do;)
White trim on point, if you ask me. Also really glad we went with black windows and the black 'crown' trim piece, too.

Back of the house: looks COMPLETELY DIFFERENT.

Craziest comparison for me:

Neighbors' side:

Garage: We had to get new garage doors right before the addition, since ours totally broke. I picked light gray and just hoped it was the right shade to match the someday-addition. Turns out they worked great as inspiration for the lighter gray color.

Details: So many fun details on our house that never showed before, since they were all painted the same color.

There's that black trim piece that I love.

And although I figured this out after they'd already painted several windows, I asked to have the bottom strip of the windows done in black like the left window. Again, glad we went that route.

Bead board soffit that COULD be stripped down and left as raw wood, but for now we went with white. Maybe someday!

So the painting process wasn't too awful. We interviewed three guys and went with Rick , who was reliable and did great work. He estimated it would take him 10 days and it really took 20 days. He came every day at 7 am and even on Saturdays, sometimes with one other guy and sometimes with just himself. Rarely he had three other guys helping him.

We knew our existing paint was lead based just because of the age of the house and because Rick tested it. Rick was a certified lead removal specialist and that was important to us. He could only scrape the paint on one side at a time and had to wear huge suits and masks and tarp off everything around that side. Not all of the old paint came off like we had hoped. But you can't pressure wash lead based paint, so hand scraping was a lot more labor intensive and some of the old stuff was just GLUED on there practically. Rick tried to use a big sander but ultimately the hand scraping was best. He used some special primer/adhesion agent for any of the bumps and uneven parts of the paint.

They did mostly stick to doing one side at a time but it was a HUGE project, as expected. Rick never seemed too rattled by how long it was taking though;)

We also originally thought about getting new windows in the house, but then we decided to have Rick paint our existing windows black. We also wanted him to paint just the screens (our windows are so old, they have a separate storm and separate screen that are exchanged twice a year). Then we planned to get new windows just on the second level.

But once we saw how nice they looked painted black, I figured that we should save ourselves several thousands of dollars and just paint everything instead! That meant I pulled up an extra 10 storms for Rick to paint from the first floor. And we also had him paint the storm/screen combos on the second floor that we planned to toss and buy new. REALLY good decision, we are so happy to push off another major house project for a few more years (windows, $$$$$$$$).

And now for our patio: we had a big concrete slab poured as a part of the addition process, and then we wanted an arc extension off of that slab. We asked our mason to come back and do it for us but he was booked solid until September. So Tony and I went and picked out stone pavers and then he and Nate and I did the dang thing.

We also got SOD to help our backyard feel less like a dirt pile. It's really coming along! We have actual green grass again, hallelujah.

I never really get into flowers that much but this year I'm totally digging them. Also into adding stones to edge multiple flower beds around our house. Better late than never, right?

All in all, we are happy we did the addition when we did. Our contractor has since gone to work for a bigger company so if we had waited a year until things 'settled down', we would have missed the chance to work with Scott.

We went from 3 beds/1.5 baths to 5 beds/2.5 baths with this addition. Wallace got his own brand-new nursery, we got a master bedroom that can fit a king sized bed, plus we have his/her walk-in closets and a large (for us!) master bathroom with two sinks and a glass door shower. We have a door into the master suite to separate our new bedroom and bathroom from the four kids' rooms. But all 5 bedrooms are on the second floor together, and the two full bathrooms share a wall for plumbing.

Our general timeline:
We signed the contract with the architect in January, he completely finished in May, the contractor broke ground in June, we moved into the new addition in December, and we officially closed on the new mortgage in February. Then we got the house painted in May and that part just finished last weekend. So all together, the construction piece really took a whole year of people in and out of our house, constant messes everywhere, nails in our yard, trucks in our driveway, dumpsters in our driveway, porta-John in our yard, our yard being completely destroyed into a mud pit, and other really awesome things that come with construction.

But bottom line? It was 100% worth it. We were told to expect the process to take twice as long and cost twice as much as our estimate. In reality, it took about 6 months of actual construction when Scott predicted 4 months. Unlike the typical warning about home construction, we actually did not go over budget. There were a few items that we opted to add into the process and pay outside of our loan to make happen. I can actually count three things that we upgraded, to put us slightly over the contracted price: 1. extra insulation in the new walls, 2. solid wood doors for the rooms, and 3. windows that are black on the exterior but white on the interior. Not too bad!

And this concludes my epic posts about our addition. Next up, Wallace turns one on Sunday. Hold me.

We left off in April, when we finished with our architect. It's a little fuzzy to me now, but I know we signed the contract with our general contractor, Scott, sometime in May. We went over everything with a fine toothed comb because we wanted to include as much as possible up front, knowing that if we added jobs in later they'd be up-charged by 40%. Being aware of that fun little tip made us say, 'We want Central AC in the entire house now', and also 'might as well do a whole new roof since we have to do the back half of the house anyway.' Can I get an AMEN to both of these big ticket items?

One decision that we mulled over for a few days was whether or not to create doors from our sunroom, onto the new patio. At first we definitely wanted to bust through this 'playroom' but then as we talked about moving electrical lines, creating stairs onto the patio that would take up about half of the concrete space, we weren't so sure. Then the logistics of walking from our kitchen, around to the sunroom, and out the door seemed to be exactly the same as walking form our kitchen, out our side door, and around the back to the patio. We decided that we can always add doors and steps later, but we wanted to leave the first floor alone as much as possible and save on space for the new patio.

First up in the long list of sub-contractors was the mason, who came to dig two giant holes in our backyard on June 19, 2017. Porter's infatuation with heavy machinery meant that the entire construction process seemed like we were orchestrating it just for him, and when the masons left their diggers in our backyard over the weekends? Heck yes, we got pictures.

After they dug the holes, they had to pour some concrete into them for supports. Then the concrete had to cure and somehow this process took much longer than anticipated. STORY OF OUR LIFE when it comes to a construction timeline, right? We were waiting for three giant steel beams to be delivered and there was some miscommunication, which meant that right when I had Wallace there was a lull in the action for the addition. Looking back, it was a blessing to have some silence for the first two weeks of bringing home our newborn baby. Things picked up at the end of July, though.

After the lovely Porta Potty was delivered to our side yard, Scott parked his work trailer in our driveway, along with the massive dumpster that sat in our driveway and blocked our garage for 4+ months. Then the steel beams were finally delivered on 7/31/17. Alllll of the lumber needed for the framing, plus the roof tresses arrived (in our yard) right before that. They used a humongous crane to lift the main steel beam into place, and then started framing in the addition and adding some rough walls. This part seems to go really fast, just like everyone told us it would. Scott, our GC, is a carpenter and he did a lot of the rough framing himself with two other guys.

On 8/11/17, they first started tearing off the roof and old airing porch. Also, they had to time the tear off with the weather. They'd put a huge tarp down over the open part of our roof, and started with the back of our house. No big deal, except for the night they didn't tarp it because it took about an hour start to finish, to secure the tarp...and the forecast never included rain. Until it started to POUR at about 6am the next morning, and then I saw the first of three leaks into our kitchen ceiling. A low point of the process would be when I saw water pouring out of our kitchen light fixture, the newborn baby was crying, Nate was at work, I was on maternity leave, and the crazy had just begun!!

End of August meant the roofers arrived, as did our brand new shingles. This was an extremely messy process, if you can imagine, and we are still finding rusty nails in our yard a year later. But I think we had three layers of shingles on the roof, plus the original cedar shakes from the 1920s up there. As the roof was going up, Scott and his guys were framing some inside walls and working on the soffits of the addition. After the rough framing was done, the insulation guys came and we upgraded to extra insulation given that the addition has WI winter air coming at it from four sides.

Early September brought the electrician, the plumber, Scott ordered our new windows, and Nate and I decided to go with two pedestal sinks in our master bathroom. We just could not find a solid wood vanity that didn't cost 4k, and the more I hunted around the more I fell in love with two pedestal sinks for the clean lines/minimalist look. Scott assured us that he would build a nice linen cabinet in the bathroom for storage and even with the rough framing, we knew it would feel HUGE to us compared to our other full bath. To access the plumbing from our basement into the addition, they did have to tear out part of our kitchen wall to get to the 'stack', and then they had to get creative with where to place the new pipes. We ended up having them put the pipes along our kitchen ceiling and outside wall, and you don't even notice it now--but we were kind of hoping they could pipe off the upstairs full bathroom into the addition instead of going through our kitchen. Ah, well.

I have in my notes that our roof was totally done on 9/6/17, the plumbing to the new bathroom was finished on 9/10/17, and the HVAC company first came on 9/18/18. It took them awhile but they installed central AC in our whole house, creating ducts from a unit in the attic. They went into each room on the second floor, and then piped down to the first floor through two closets. This was a no-brainer for us, although Scott thought we could get by with just having one vent on the main level. I knew if we were converting to central AC and saying goodbye to window units forever, that we needed to do this right. And so they put a vent into each room on the first floor, too.

Scott installed the new windows on 9/20/17. And then began the saga with the plumbing inspector from the city.

The plumber was awesome but the plumbing inspector was not awesome. The inspector wanted the plumber to tear out an extra part of our kitchen wall, so that he could see if we had a vent to our half bathroom downstairs....which seriously has nothing to do with the addition and was SO ANNOYING to me. And tearing out plaster walls in the one room I didn't want to touch was the messiest, and this came at a time when Nate was traveling and I was hormonally charged at about six weeks post partum. It ended up being fine, and there was a glorious vent that the inspector needed to see. But it was highly inconvenient to lose our cubby storage and hooks during the first week of school. We didn't get them back until the drywallers came and fixed the huge hole, and we just learned to live without our little mudroom area in the back of the kitchen.

Early October brought the drywall company, which was rumored to be the messiest part of the gig. Newsflash, they aren't lying. Hanging the drywall wasn't too bad, and it just took them two days to hang it all (delivered with a crane, through our new windows, super cool). They taped and mudded, then sanded, and textured the walls a bit. This part was horribly dusty and it was during a time when my mom and Memaw were here visiting. We had to exit the house and go to the playground to escape the dust, and although the main drywall guy 'cleaned' after they finished, it was certainly still messy as heck.

View from the top, our lovely dumpster that STUNK and sat around for way too long.

Begin mantra: It will be worth it when it's done. Repeat forever.

We did get to write our names in sharpies before the drywallers were finished, so that's good.

At the same time as drywall going up inside, Scott and his guys were installing the new siding to the exterior of the house. Because we have both plank siding and also cedar shakes, it kind of took forever to get it looking authentic and like the rest of our house. We interviewed three exterior painters, as we were going to paint the entire house outside of the construction loan. We picked our guy in August and hoped to have it painted in October, but then winter hit hard and fast, and the new siding wasn't fully installed. So we opted to wait until Spring to paint everything, which was a bummer to push off but the right move. Low temps can't dip below 40 degrees so that the paint sticks well, and we knew it could be well into April or May before we saw warmth like that again. Oh, Wisconsin winters, you are ridiculous.

Since the drywall was ready to paint, Tony, Lois, Nate and myself got to work at the end of October. Painting wasn't included in our construction contract as we've already painted every square inch of our house and I actually enjoy painting. Come to find out that brand new drywall, compared to old school plaster walls, sucks up paint like none other! I picked two grays for the addition: Behr's Dolphin Fin for a lighter gray (which is already in our kitchen and hallways) and Behr's Pencil Sketch (which we had in our previous master bedroom and full bathroom). Then for the ceilings we did Dolphin Fin at 50% white. We painted, and painted, and painted for a whole weekend and even into the week. It was quite the job but looks so amazing now!

The gutter and downspout guy came at the end of October, and Jim the tile guy started at this time, too. Because I completely blew our budget with the black and white hex tile for the bathroom floor, we decided to have Jim tile the pricey floor for us but we would tile the shower stall with white subway tile ourselves. Jim added the concrete board for the shower but then spent about four days tiling the floor for us---and he was not shy about telling me how much of a pain in the rear this hex tile was to lay. Ahem, WORTH IT.

Scott's main guy, Bill, was working away on all of the trim inside the addition: baseboards, window casings, and trim around the doors. This 'finishing' stuff was really labor intensive and lengthy but they wanted to do it right, and match the rest of our 1920's trim that is pretty thick. We wanted all white trim so much of what Bill installed was already primed white, but we had to paint it all with two coats. Filling all of the nail holes and caulking around the trim was a huge job, too---mostly done by Bill but we also did some of it to help speed along the process.

In early November, our solid wood doors were delivered. I thought one of the lumber guys that delivered them was going to have a heart attack carrying the doors up our stairs. I finally had to remove all of my photos from our wall gallery in the stairway because the doors were going to knock them down. Surprised the wall gallery made it that long, actually!

Also, once the bathroom floor was tiled, the plumber came back to install the sinks and toilet. Bill started working on the hardwood floors in our bedroom, hallway, and Wallace's room. We went with solid wood, pre-finished planks that are very similar to the rest of the house. But the new floors are a standard width for planks and our originals are really narrow, so we knew they wouldn't match perfectly. The architect briefly talked about finding reclaimed, narrow wood planks to use instead but we didn't think it would be worth the hassle and we really like the gloss/newness of the wood we chose.

Bill was installing floors but also finishing up all of the trim, which was taking a million years. Nate and I ordered all of the light fixtures and a new KING SIZED BED for our bedroom in mid-November. He and Tony tiled and then grouted the shower in November and it turned out awesome! Also, the HVAC guys came back to turn on the heat to the addition this month, and having in-floor heat in our master bedroom is the greatest. We used our existing radiant heat system for the addition, with Wallace's room and the new bathroom having baseboard heat but our bedroom with in-floor heat. I'll never get an area rug for our bedroom because I am obsessed with stepping down on the bare, WARM wood in the winter.

Right before Thanksgiving, they poured the concrete for the patio outside. JUST before the ground froze.

Thanksgiving was the target 'move in' date for many months preceding November, but of course it came and went without much fuss. Scott installed the doors right after Thanksgiving, then installed the knobs we picked, and the mirrors in our bathroom. The trim was super close to being finished but not quite yet.

At the beginning of December, Nate and I spent every free moment painting trim. We even got the kids to 'help' us on the weekend, which was hilarious. The electrician came and installed all of our light fixtures and ceiling fans. The cleaning lady that was a part of the contract, came and worked her magic for about three days in early December. I was SO hoping she'd show us some mercy and clean not only the addition, but the other parts of our house that the construction mess touched (basically all of it, with the central AC holes in ceilings and people up and down our stairs for months). Deb the cleaning lady did end up deep cleaning most of our first floor plus the addition, which made me so happy.

Scott installed the bathroom linen closet and then on 12/9/17, we moved into our new bedrooms! This was a big, tiring weekend as every kid got a new (Craigslist) bed or got shuffled around into a different room. Truman kept his room that he used to share with Cecelia, but T got a new loft bed. Cecelia moved into our old master bedroom and also got her own loft bed. Porter kept his 'nursery' but it became a big kid room when he got the bunk beds from T&C's old shared room. His bunks just happen to be Nate's from childhood, too. Then Wallace FINALLY got his own room, after sleeping in our bedroom since he was born. Also we set up our king size bed in our new room and just stood back in awe at the size of it.

After nearly eleven years of marriage, we have finally arrived. ;)

Wallace's room:

Bathroom:

Once we moved into the addition, I think there was less pressure for Scott to finish 'quickly' outside. But he hired a helper to work on the siding of the addition, and worked on that for all of December and into January. We had the HVAC guys return right before Christmas, to make the baseboard heater in Wallace's room larger, as I felt like it was always cold in his nursery. Also, Scott and Jim the tile guy installed our glass shower door the week before Christmas which was huge, because we could actually start using our new bathroom after that.

I stopped taking notes after December, but I know Scott was finishing up the siding as it was snowing and horribly cold. He had to build the columns to cover the steel vertical beams. The electrician had to come back a few times to do some work on the patio ceiling, the HVAC guys had to do some stuff to the AC unit outside, and the gutter guy had to install a gutter on our garage. I believe we officially signed for our final installment of the title company payment in February and began paying our new mortgage payment in March. So it was about 8 months of actual construction time with a few lulls here and there, and Scott initially told us 4 months. Twice as long as expected? Seems about right!

Here is a video tour that I did of the inside, through Instastories. I'm sure that's somehow better than this lengthy post for 'reveal' pictures.

Next up: exterior finishes (painting the entire house!) to complete the renovation.